Cookbook Challenge – Week 8: Sweet

I’ve jumped on the Cookbook Challenge bandwagon, in an effort to diversify my cooking repertoire, but also partly to force myself to actually use the various cookbooks I have in my collection. I’m usually one who goes to cookbooks for inspiration, as opposed to following recipes. Unfortunately, old habits die hard – this week’s effort was in part improvisation, due in part to a lack of foresight, and in part to the fact I was cooking in someone else’s kitchen!

The theme this week was ‘Sweet’ – which pretty much says ‘Dessert’ to me – so I thought I’d go with an old favourite; Bread and Butter Pudding. I went with Jamie Oliver’s recipe.

Though I did make a few adaptations: I used Burgen Oatbran and Honey bread, I omitted the nutmeg and cinnamon (as they weren’t available to me), I used home-made apricot jam (from @tammois) instead of marmalade to glaze the pudding, and I fudged the quantities a bit to make a 2/3-ish sized one. I was supposed to look like this:

It turned out like this:

Not to shabby, I think! Hearty approvals all around from the tasters, and I discovered a new favourite vanilla ice cream in the process – try the Weis Vanilla Bean. It’s even got the black specks of vanilla in it! Nom.

Conor & Agnes – yep, the bread made a big difference! So much more texture. Though to be honest, the only other time I've ever made B&B pudding, I used brioche, so I'm not sure what the regular one tastes like…